Publications & Working Papers

After being rather moderate throughout the post-Cold War period, great power rivalries are gaining steam again. Yet, in contrast to past rivalries they are characterized by complex interdependencies which prompt the rivals to engage in order-building within and across rival “blocs”. We argue that this order-building is frequently done by means of “cooptation”, i.e. the trading of institutional privileges for order support. To prepare the conceptual ground for studying cooptation in great power rivalries, we conceptualize cooptation as a specific mode of cooperation and distinguish between four types: taming opposition, securing partners, seeking patronage, and wooing leaders. We demonstrate 1) how great power rivalry shapes cooptation in institutional orders; 2) that cooptation can exacerbate great power rivalry; and 3) that cooptation can tame great power rivalry under certain conditions. We thereby show that theories of cooptation, usually used to analyze domestic politics, help explain international order(ing) in great power rivalries.

In some cases, hegemonic powers manage to turn dissatisfied (former) rivals into satisfied partners by means of cooptation. Yet, in other cases, similar cooptation attempts result in failure. Why? We argue that the generosity of the hegemon’s cooptation offer is of utmost importance for whether cooptation succeeds or fails to overcome the rivalry with coopted great powers. When hegemonic powers offer a generous cooptation deal, a virtuous circle sets in that may socialize great power rivals into the order dominated by the hegemon. When, by contrast, the cooptation offer is not generous, a vicious circle is likely to develop, which may even exacerbate the great power rivalry. To assess the empirical plausibility of this socialization-by-cooptation theory, we study the cooptation of Germany after World War II, the cooptation of Russia after the Cold War, and the contemporary cooptation of China into the international financial system.

Great power rivalries are pervasive in contemporary US-China relations. However, it remains unclear whether International Relations (IR) research can provide reflexive and policy-relevant foresight on future trajectories of geopolitical competition. This article reviews the current state of qualitative foresight on US-China power rivalries. We find that existing IR theory-based foresight and applied scenario-building approaches offer important insights but could be further advanced to anticipate dynamics of future great power rivalries in a theoretically informed and policy-relevant manner. While foresight based on IR theory would benefit from a greater focus on methods that help foresee and manage the contingent process of evolving US-China relations, existing approaches to applied scenario-building stand to gain from more conceptual abstraction to provide a more theoretically informed view into the future. We conclude by outlining a “paths projections” approach that brings process-tracing methods to scenario-building and thereby promises to offer (more) context-sensitive, process-centered and policy-relevant foresight. 

How might the regime complex of balance-of-payments lending evolve amidst ongoing global power shifts? In this paper, we challenge the hitherto static outlook on the viability of external institutional change within the environment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Dominant views in International Political Economy suggest that the IMF’s current focality will persist as China’s reformist approach to balance-of-payments lending and strong network effects favoring the IMF induce (inter-)institutional inertia. In contrast, we argue that the interests of challenger states – particularly China – and their exposure to network effects are contingent and dynamic. Depending on challengers’ reformist or revisionist interests and their varying exposure to network effects, we derive a plurality of pathways for external institutional change toward multiple inter-institutional futures between the IMF and newcomer institutions. We highlight institutional hedging as a likely proximate future for China’s institution-building efforts while we consider complementary layering and conflictual counter-institutionalization distinct possibilities in the long run. Our “paths projections” spell out the key features of these different pathways, identify underlying causal conditions, and specify empirical indications for their respective materialization. In doing so, we offer an innovative and policy-relevant outlook on future institutional change in international finance and beyond.

Western-dominated telecommunication orders are increasingly challenged by geoeconomic competition. This paper examines how China’s quest for autonomy in reshaping transnational telecommunication orders may evolve amid technological change and explores the implications for global telecommunication governance. We argue that China’s dynamic exposure to network effects will shape its strategies for transforming telecommunication orders. These strategies range from cooptation and coexistence to confrontation. Different strategies suggest diverging futures for the structural configuration of transnational telecommunication orders. We develop “path projections” for two key orders: international banking telecommunication, currently dominated by SWIFT, and internet governance standards, for which ICANN is the focal institution. Our path projections identify the features of alternative Chinese strategies, identify indicators, and assess the likelihood of different strategies and outcomes based on empirical trend data on China’s exposure to evolving network effects. We find that while cooptation is a probable near-term scenario in international banking telecommunication, coexistence is more likely in internet governance. Confrontation remains a possibility for both areas in the more distant future. Our paper provides a forward-looking, theoretically grounded, and policy-relevant contribution to IR scholarship on power rivalries and institutional change, as well as IPE research on geoeconomic competition in the transnational ordering of telecommunication.

We propose a novel approach to foresight on international power rivalries that is theoretically reflexive, methodologically robust and policy-relevant. We argue that existing qualitative foresight can be advanced by bringing process tracing methods to scenario-building. The resulting “paths projections” approach reinforces the strengths of existing strands of IR theory-based foresight and applied scenario-building, while addressing their respective weaknesses. Paths projections are theory-based, process-centered, and conditional scenarios – modeled as causal mechanisms – formulated to allow for continuous assessment and updating based on increasing future information, while being oriented towards informing political action. They promise to provide reflexive and relevant foresight on evolving power rivalries. We illustrate the potential of our “paths projections” approach with empirical applications to US-China rivalries over Taiwan, US-EU-China rivalries over transnational communication orders for internet governance and interbank messaging, and inter-institutional rivalries between Western legacy and non-Western challenger institutions in global finance.

In turbulent times, forward-looking analysis is high in demand. But disruptive developments, such as the US contestation of multilateral institutions under Donald Trump, seem to evade established theoretical and methodological tools. We propose a “paths projections” approach that makes effective use of theoretical strengths in International Relations by buttressing them with a process-centered and contingent scenario-building method. Rather than predicting a single future of the Liberal International Order, we develop alternative pathways grounded in liberal, realist, and institutionalist theory and integrate them into a conditional model of US contestation and its impact on multilateralism. Our approach offers empirically updateable guidance and identifies points of policy intervention. It advances foresight methodology and redirects theoretical debates toward forward-looking analyses.